Lady Kitsune’s Fox Garden

04: So the World is Actually Fucked

It was a strange feeling, knowing that what was probably your aunt felt sorry for you and thought you were crazy. Niwashi noted that it was also mildly uncomfortable to be looked at as though she was pitiful, especially for simply enjoying her favorite tea.

Seriously, what was so wrong with liking Jade Green Tea? It had everything needed for a Kitsune to feel sated, and it was both delicious and nutritious! Hell, it had all the essential vitamins and minerals…

“Haaaah,” she sighed. “But at least the Farmer is going to be bringing me snacks or something for my hard work? Would be nice to be able to have some beef once in a while. Never had that before…”

After a while, she looked off into the distance and frowned a little. “But what is Inarizushi? It sounds so familiar, and so delicious, but I know I’ve never had it.”

She almost wondered what it would be like, but quickly reorganized herself and made her way out to her fields. It was only natural that she would till and remake the limited fields she could within the Valley using [Gaia Control] to make it into nice and loamy, fertile soil with no rocks to mess with the roots.

Then, she went over to the mountain and started to shore up some terraces for a good bit of farmland. Because yes, most of the Kami Realm she found herself in was on the side of a mountain.

In fact, while the rocks of the mountain were filled with water-natured energy — as well as earthy vitality — which made it perfect for growing anything that needed a lot of water, the fact of the matter was that the altitude was high enough to make the air thin.

Without her skills given to her by the game Yggdrasil, she’d essentially be running out of air at the highest altitude on her mountain, yet this was exactly where she ended her last terrace at, after having built her way up the mountain from the bottom with retaining rock walls fortified by her version of the World Tree.

At some point, as she was finishing up her work and making her way back down the mountain to see if the Farmer from before had anything for her to eat, she felt the air around her change. A sense of forboding and the pungent scent of fermentation and alcohol flowed through the area and filled her nostrils, making her want to gag.

But she knew better, for there was only one person this could be.

“Nice, nice, see you’re getting settled in. Shrine is way more than I was thinking you’d have, but good to see you prepared, very EEEEEEVIL of you,” the goddess of capitalism and EEEEEVIL spoke up behind her, drunkenly staggering around as she looked over Niwashi’s work.

“Ah!” Niwashi turned to look at the Goddess of Drunkards and sighed. “Well, it would help if I had some more seeds to plant. Hopefully the other fox comes through when she said she’d get me some seeds…”

Her stomach rumbled. “Damn, gonna need to eat soon huh.”

“Eh, go grab a cow outside. They’re tender,” Sumire muttered. “But, I have EEEEVIL business with you.”

Sumire drunkenly saluted. “First off, congrats! You survived your first kami realm! Not that it was much, with Count MoosALot, and it was kinda covered in shit… but still! It’s a sacred realm forgotten by gods and you claimed it as your own den! Nice,” she said, giving a thumbs up. “You’re on your way upward, which is good cuz we are on a time crunch cuz this world is really fucked to like hilarious levels.”

“What?” Niwashi asked, looking at Sumire with wide eyes. “What is happening to this world? Is it dying?”

Sumire laughed. “Ohhhhh yeah. Like, this is a DxD world. Standard timeline, it gets more or less saved by a pervert, but uh, I may have capitalismed too hard here, and some things are going to start escalating over the next century. Long story short? World War III is gonna happen and it’s gonna be bad,” Sumire said,

The goddess took a long swig of her vodka. It was labeled ‘Motherland’s Reserve’. “Did you know I stole this from Sayuri? She’s got the good shit when she’s not preaching stupid socialism.”

“Shit,” Niwashi finally grumbled. “At least it can’t be as bad as my world,” she tried, even as her tails drooped. “After all, this world has magic. That means it should be easy o pick back up after the bombs drop, right?”

“Oh you sweet summer child,” Sumire said, suddenly right there and looking into her eyes. “The magic got used up, honey. Magic can take a lot but once you use it all and kill 95% of all life, it be gone. Like. Poof,” Sumire said, flexing her hand for emphasis. “Also, funny you mention your world. Cuz, surprise! It’s your world. Just, hundredish years in the past? I wasn’t really paying attention too hard. Distracted by the EEEEEEVIL my boyfriend was doing in his billions of orange cat forms. So cute.”

Niwashi almost fainted, had she not had immunities to such things built into her build. But her legs still felt weak, and she still felt despair beyond belief.

“Then, isn’t everything I do useless?” she asked pitifully. “Even if I do my best, if I actually succeed, I would erase myself in the process right? Which would mean I can’t go back in time, which means the world resets due to the paradox—”

“Shh,” Sumire said, shoving the open bottle in Niwashi’s face and making her drink vodka that sure as Hell had magical energy in it. “Calm down little baby foxxo, calm down…”

Niwashi felt the alcohol slam through her resistances like it wasn’t even there, getting her extraordinarily fucked up immediately as she had never had alcohol of any kind before.

“Good girl, let the alcohol run through you like a runaway train. There, isn’t that better?” Sumire asked, lowering the bottle.

Niwashi shook her head, turned, and puked. It was too much, and it hit her hard on an empty stomach.

“Ah, right, you were hungry. My bad, waste of alcohol. Eh, anyway, you’ll adjust. But don’t worry about paradoxes. Time is wibbly wobbly like the folds of supple cheeks, so you don’t gotta worry about paradoxing yourself out of existence. New actions just make new timelines, and we foxxos get thiccer. Probably don’t go fuck your ancestor though. That might cause a little glitch or two, unless you want to be your own grandmother or something somehow,” Sumire said.

Niwashi groaned pitifully, flopping to the ground and transforming into her fox form. She had no words. Her head hurt.

“Wow, you need to work on your tolerance. Will have to seriously work on that. No servant of mine has a weak constitution! But for now, your graceful, beautiful, and amazingly EEEEEVIL goddess has your back,” she said, with a wink.

With that, she snapped her fingers. Or tried to. Sumire frowned. “Come on, I can do this, it’s just snapping fingers, come on come on, why is this so hard I’m a cosmic goddess!” she said, finally snapping her fingers.

Light engulfed Niwashi and she suddenly felt like she had before the goddess shoved alcohol down her throat. “Rewound your time a bit, one off freebie! I normally charge for that,” Sumire laughed.

“Ugh,” Niwashi stood up fully and shook herself off, her form forced back into humanoid state by the time reversal. “Now what?”

“Right! Well, never fear, your benevolent goddess of EEEEVIL has your back. You are spearheading my brand new system to see if you can’t unfuck this world. You’ll be able to purify polluted kami realms, grow crops, sell them into the engine that is capitalism, get rewards, and grow in strength, and with it you will stop World War III! Which is like World War II but with way more nukes and magical Nazis. Oh yeah, they’re there and they’re bad.”

“…Why don’t you fix this yourself if you’re so strong?” Niwashi asked with a tilt of her head. “Seriously, this sounds like something you could solve by brushing your fur or something…”

“I mean, you’re not wrong. With like, an hour? I could probably fix every issue this world has, but like, there’s ten trillion worlds all facing similar issues and they keep popping up. I wanna automate this shit. Hard work is EEEEEVIL and good, but so is delegation! So yeah, I give you the tools, and you can handle it. Hell, if things go way too far south, I’ll even pull an exit strategy for ya. Your goddess is benevolent, and you are my employee, so I’m not gonna let you die in nuclear and literal hellfire,” Sumire explained.

“I thought you were the goddess of Evil?” Niwashi asked. “This sounds way too kind, even if it does suck. What’s the catch?”

“Hey, I’m not a monster! I like my subordinates, they’re cute doing their little capitalism EEEEVIL. But here’s the thing. If I treat my subordinates right, that means they’re more loyal to me, which means they are willing to work more, and get more done, and sometimes even work longer hours. What’s all that mean? That’s right, it means EEEEEEEVIL happens, that’s what. Way better than you plotting against me. That’s always annoying,” the goddess remarked.

“Huh,” Niwashi sighed. “Alright then. I guess I can do it…”

Her stomach rumbled loudly. “…After food.”

“Seems like one of your new minions is waiting outside with dinner,” Sumire said, after a sniff. “You go eat, I’mma explore more what you got here and enjoy this sweet sweet vintage.” She rubbed her cheek against the bottle lovingly as she walked off, tails swaying.

Curiously, a few ‘grapes’ fell out of her tail seemingly by accident as she staggered off, singing a song about a drunken accountant early in the morning.

Welp, if she was going to give her fruit to plant, she could certainly do that first, and then get food. After all, grapes could be used for food too, so she’d at least be less likely to go hungry if she grew what the goddess wanted, right?

~~~~

AN:

HiddenMaster: And we have another chapter.

Trying to escalate things up in a more concrete direction here. Doing something new here, which is trying to get a firm setup with, well, numbers and stuff, for the System here, but need a bit more time. We have a friend helping us out here who knows this stuff well.

But hopefully, it’ll prove interesting and something to work with the setting as Niwashi does her best to purify the world, make alliances, grow her purification abilities and plants, and generally stop WWIII because this DxD world is just the past of the Overlord world in this AU.

(Arguably worse. The pollution and malevolent energies from Sumire not keeping a lid on things is arguably going to empower some of the bad guys here, but we’ll get to that later).

Kitsu: Yup. This is a bad-end world that Niwashi has to save within probably a decade at most. Stick around to see how we deal with that shenaniganry, yeah? Might be able to show y’all a few really neat things, especially as we’ll be doing a little light research into topics using various techniques Hidden and I have learned over the years to help maybe do a bit of gardening and mythology lore building here.

Honestly, can’t wait to dig in and pull shit up that we can actually use. Will be really fun to see what we can and can’t reference, the more obscure the better.

HiddenMaster: Indeed, I think it’ll be a lot of good fun once we get going.

Also, for once, a level 100 Overlord character who is going to find they’re a big fish in an ocean of even bigger fish. All because Niwashi really didn’t want to deal with Ainz Ooal Gown and its trolls.

Kitsu: Yus! And don’t worry! I actually have plans for those trolls to be an issue in the far future when Ainz tries to return to his world and save his friends, only for Niwashi to literally have already done so, even if he doesn’t realize it.

Future book thoughts, yeah?

Anyways, if you like our work, we do take commissions. Which means yes, you can indeed pay us to shenaniganize for you, and bring your world to life.

Our links are below, and you can find us there!

Kitsu’s Foxxo Shrine: https://aikoakiyoshi.carrd.co/

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Thanks for Reading and Stay Fluffy!